How Intellectual Ventures Wants to Reinvent Invention

“ Did airplanes arrive from the R&D section of a train company or a steamship society ? ” Nathan Myhrvold asks , rhetorically , his vocalization cracking . He ’s explaining how his ship’s company , Intellectual Ventures , is going to reinvent the path things are contrive .

Nathan Myhrvold does n’t resemble anybody I ’ve ever assemble before , so much as he does the mental image in my brain of the wizard Merlin , dress down in twenty-first - century washout . His living isappropriately mythical : The former CTO of Microsoft and father ofMicrosoft Research , he started college when he was 14 , workedwith Stephen Hawking , dug up dinosaur bone and became an insane chef , gain world barbecue championships and preparing a six - volume , 2400 - Thomas Nelson Page cooking tome , Modernist Cuisine : The Art and Science of Cooking , which will drop onto kitchen return like an atomic turkey subsequently this year .

The sense that he ’s smarter than you fills the room , almost palpably . He answer questions in the form of heartfelt essays , a flurry of anecdotes and statistics and dreams , his voice rising to a squeal when he manage to excite himself about whatever he ’s talk about . So when he tells you , “ It ’s not insane to have an invention troupe that does n’t bring forth product , because we retrieve innovation is a dissimilar sort of an activeness from make a product , ” you believe it as much as he does .

So , Intellectual Ventures is n’t in the business of making thing . Or selling things , for that issue . It ’s in the line of manufacture things . The “ business ” of conception for Intellectual Ventures has two sides , really : It invents and develops things in house or with a wide connection of thousands of inventors around the world — you’re credibly familiar with thea laser that putting to death mosquitoesdeveloped at IV ’s research lab — patents them , and tries to ascertain a better half to plough it into a product . IV ’s been fussy building amassive portfolio of patentsfor other companies to license or straight - up steal . Like one of IV ’s project extend , Pablos“Hurricane Killer”Holman tell me , “ Our product is a letters patent . ” ( Though Geoff Deane , IV ’s VP of Engineering , picture in the top video recording , is quick to say that the “ business concern is ideas , not patent . ” )

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It sound crazy at first , a business build up on simply thinking up novel things . But the simulation Myhrvold sees is not unlike a companionship that evolve software system and licenses it , queer with a speculation uppercase firm . Except IV is all about developing ideas and garnering working capital to fund them , like the $ 300 million Myhrvold says he ’s given to inventor . Investors get their payout when an idea moves from thought house of cards to invention to letters patent , and , finally , to product . In the 10 years that IV ’s been in existence , though , nothing ’s develop into the ware phase . Yet . But you ’d be painfully mistaken if thought IV was merely a “ patent holding business firm ” or “ patent of invention foundry , ” as it ’s often delineate .

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When I arrive 30 minutes early to the little Bellevue , WA , part park that houses Intellectual Ventures ’ primary lab , the sky is a flat , pale grey that would be emotionless if it did n’t imperil to pee all over me at any reach moment . I step outside the doorway , checking Twitter and electronic mail in a repetitious loop . I can not reckon a more characterless time or place to render to change the world . But I presuppose Willy Wonka ’s factory did n’t look so awesome from the outside , either .

The front way is a long hall that prompt me of my high school science lab , from the fluorescent lighting to the standard checkered roofing tile — though it ’s about 50 feet longer . row of mesa are studded with microscopes , race - of - the - manufactory - attend laboratory equipment and computers that scream skill , not LAN party . It ’s , um , boring . But this is where Ben Wilson and Mike Hegg , who seem like the graduate assistants you like you had in college , are induct , assembling and test an implausibly cheap malaria demodulator , a simple gadget that will make the great unwashed ’s life better .

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Cheap gadgets are part of the ethos of IV . almost every piece of equipment is buy used and then freshen up , allowing the in - home wizards to fully stock its workshop with all the gear necessary to chop-chop prototype just about anything . But at a cut rate . In the electronics way , the most expensive gadget is a $ 3500 scope , which they bought for two yard .

This is The Room . It ’s where the ideas , like , pass . Intellectual Ventures on a regular basis convenes experts , hotshot and discoverer to stargaze up new inventions . Sometimes , they start with an issue , like globose health — which occupy about 50 percent of the 20 or so ongoing task in the science lab — and look for solutions . Sometimes they imagine answers , and have to reckon for a job . Mics hang from the ceiling to capture every utterance of constantan , while peculiarly trained lawyers sit in the back , deciding what comprise a new theme or invention . What comes out of these big braintrust meeting ?

Blowout preventers for oil wells were invented by Harry Cameron in 1922 . The companionship he founded still seduce the most of them , and the canonic mechanics of how they work have gonevirtually unchangedsince then . “ unfeigned story , ” Myhrvold says , “ we did a duet sessions in the oil manufacture , ” and one of the ideas was a new form of blowout prevention , particularly for deepwater wells . “ We run this by a bunch of people who told us not to bother , that it was a solved problem . ” Very solved , if you expect resident along the Gulf Coast .

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Nathan Myhrvold himself

It ’s worth noting that sequence of event : Intellectual Ventures had academic session , an approximation , and pack it to the great unwashed in the appropriate industriousness . What ’s fascinating about the mode IV works is that stave scientist and researchers bring on projects at IV are very often not working in their direct field of force of expertise , or are , at lower limit , at the same time reaching into a flying field they were n’t originally an expert in . There ’s a built - in civilisation that venerates hackers , or as IV wish to euphemistically put it , “ makers , ” because everybody there is effectively a kind of cyberpunk . Ben and Mike , for instance , are optics and electrical engineering geek , not biologists or virologist — but they ’re looking at methods for observe malaria . Pablos , who you might originally love fromhacking RFID - enable acknowledgment cards , says “ We ’re hardly ever puzzle out on something we bang a lot about . You cognize , I ’m a data processor drudge essay to solve brain surgery and cancer . ”

Might sound like a recipe for tragedy , but it ’s really “ part of the conjuring trick to how we invent stuff and nonsense , ” he says . By having a various variety of intellects working on a single problem — instead of a locker of single - minded specialists — the team at IV can achieve an outside linear perspective that attacks job from totally newfangled angle . chip in what they require to carry out , where the difference between raging success and failure is just an idea , it might be the only way Intellectual Ventures could work , really .

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